After 2015's Esalen Lectures LP as The Host (TOUCH 003LP), Barry Lynn returns to Touch Sensitive Records under his given name with a twin set of ambient cassettes. The majority of the music on the Taurus Tapes results from live looping experiments using an electric guitar as the sound source, although a few tracks on Volume 1 were also created using synthesizers, and embellished with Loughshore bird-songs and fretless bass guitar. The result is an intimate and evolving sound, sculpted live in the moment. Shades of Fripp's experiments with Eno can be detected in the Gibson fuzz tone and drifting loops, as well as more Göttsching-styled exercises in tight repetition.

After 2015's Esalen Lectures LP as The Host (TOUCH 003LP), Barry Lynn returns to Touch Sensitive Records under his given name with a twin set of ambient cassettes. The majority of the music on the Taurus Tapes results from live looping experiments using an electric guitar as the sound source, although a few tracks on Volume 1 (TOUCH 009CS) were also created using synthesizers, and embellished with Loughshore bird-songs and fretless bass guitar. The result is an intimate and evolving sound, sculpted live in the moment. Shades of Fripp's experiments with Eno can be detected in the Gibson fuzz tone and drifting loops, as well as more Göttsching-styled exercises in tight repetition.

2016 release. A reissue of a single by Maya - two tracks of timeless, heartfelt, psychedelic outsider music from Cincinnati Ohio from 1975. "Synthezoid Heartbreak" is a "Fuck You!" to those who want you to join the real estate game and turn in your misfired envelope pedals for a suit. The pro-alien sad dirge of "Distant Visions" is a reflective-afternoon delay lurker makes you wonder what happened after the fade out to "Visions". Maybe the homemade air siren blew out the studio? Remastered with additional insert featuring lyrics and notes from Burk Skyhorse Price (Maya) and Cherrystones.

Debut record from Group Zero (Cathal Cully of Girls Names). Using synthesizers and drum machines, Structures And Lights glistens with subtle Euro sophistication - pairing cold-wave optimism alongside freaky and brutal tracks for the more open-minded DJs and dancefloors. Written, recorded and mixed intermittently over four years, the narrative of Structures And Light is bound by a deepening connection with electronics, instrumentation, and the studio. With no imminent touring schedule or release deadlines, Cully built a modest home setup and began producing on his own again. He explains: "It was as an exercise in my own development and it was fun. It brought the naivety and spontaneity back to making music." This first collection of Group Zero music - along with a library of other ideas and sketches - was thought to be eternally lost and all but forgotten until a chance conversation with Touch Sensitive Records led to the tracks being salvaged and subsequently restored. The genesis of this newly discovered musical freedom coincided with a viewing of Pyramid Of Light by Heinz Mack from the post-war Dusseldorf based Group Zero art movement which resonated deeply. Cully explains: "It stirred up questions and emotions which I could not get from a book or a screen. It was the direct relation between me, the light and the physical object hanging on the wall. New moments of beauty locked in the memory. I was in awe." Cully was also taking influence from a range of contemporary electronic producers - on labels such as LIES, Diagonal, Optimo Music, Blackest Ever Black, and PAN: "These records felt as much in keeping with post-punk traditions and my own DIY background whilst tapping into the primitive ideas of masters such as Cluster, Suicide, Malaria!, and the proto-techno of pre-club music." Just as a structure obscures or reflects light furnishing us with new ways of seeing; the propulsive rhythms in Structures And Light reveal subtle differences on each repeated cycle. Here's a record from a Belfast bedroom that sounds nothing like the city, past or present. It's made with synths and drum machines, and it glistens with subtle Euro sophistication.

2016 release. Gross Net present their debut album Quantitative Easing through Touch Sensitive Records. Initially a guitar/bass/drum-machine duo of Philip Quinn (Girls Names) and Christian Donaghey (Autumns), Gross Net was conceived as an output for ideas alternative to their other groups. After the release of their first cassette EP on Art For Blind Records and Donaghey's subsequent departure to concentrate fully on Autumns, Quinn took up the Gross Net mantle solo. Released via his own Austerity Drive Records imprint earlier this year came Outstanding Debt, a collection of re-commissioned tracks from aborted releases. Beautiful boys, ghosts, exorcisms, resurrections, sex, mental disorder, the boredom that comes with being "dole-scum"; Gross Net now singularly stalks the lineage of electronic body music. Utilizing analog synthesizers, sequencers, virtual studio technology, a slew of effects, voice, and some electric guitar, Gross Net channels everything from Throbbing Gristle's "Tesco Disco", to the fear and futurism of the European cold wave, through amyl-nitrate powered strobe-lit dancefloors and empty, decaying industrial halls. Quinn on the release: "I'm keen to leave mistakes in, or what people may perceive as mistakes. I also try to do things in as few takes as possible, not only for the sake of my own interest but to bring some human aspect back in amongst all the electronics. You're hearing performances, moments in time recorded, not something that's been pieced together from numerous attempts. . . . I want to do something different. I see so much homogeneity in music and in general these days that I want to stand apart, show that there's another way or at least hold a mirror up to what's going on. . . . I'm also keen to use themes which reflect the times we're living in, certainly the darkest days I've seen in my lifetime. Sometimes I feel like I'm just constantly wading through a cultural and political cesspit." Pairing dark and brutal rhythms with existential and world-weary themes, Gross Net is the sound of the post-Brexit dystopia of now, the antidote to the endless whitewash of indie groups in their matching Topshop outfits, and a riposte to the messianic false prophets pontificating a financial ruse as a grand truth.

2015 release. Drone Pop #1 is the second album by cosmic drone-pop septet Documenta. Recorded over four days at Start Together Studios Belfast by Ben McAuley and the band, it also features additional production from David Holmes on "Love As A Ghost". Influenced by the English guitar minimalism emanating from 1980s Rugby, the darkness and light of Detroit's hit factory, and the German Kosmische set's concrète groove - Documenta present a true psychedelia through repetition, melody, and rhythm. A patient year-long process of experimentation and mixing - where the group added "washing machines, aircraft and the sound of Saturday night" - encouraged a fuller overall feel and a marked sonic progression. Documenta on the release: "We experimented at home quite a bit before returning to the studio so we got to stretch our imagination. We're constantly learning as a band and this seemed like the next musical step." Soul music in outer space. Comes on a colored LP.

2015 release. Inspired by think tanks and floatation tanks, psychological research, 2012 mythology, 1960s social planning, stoned apes, elite transhumanism, and the counter-culture, The Host's Esalen Lectures is an imaginary trip to a NorCal psychedelic retreat. Use the sounds to enter into a program of theory and practice, to accompany inward voyages, and for sunset induction rituals. And when the colored dust settles, and the weird dreams have eased off, maybe your neural re-programming has just started? Drawing from a wide source of tranced-out musical legacies, the Esalen Lectures is pitched somewhere between Ash Ra Tempel and Steve Hillage at their most freeform, and more underground new age artists like JD Emmanuel and Ariel Kalma. The Host use sweeping synthesizer patterns and subtle field recordings to create dramatic arcs across the record, and spiraling guitar squalls meet blissed-out, motionless womb lullabies and digitally-enhanced nocturnes to tell a weird story of induction, hypnosis, and psychic disturbance.

2015 release. Cherrystones pulls together the sympathetic sounds of the psychedelic ghetto. London's best kept secret, Cherrystones has been on the underground scene for a while. People kinda speak of his grooved-out genius in hushed whispers. You might remember when he closed down the final night of ATP after a decade long residency? Or when the heat moved from London to NYC which saw our man deliver an epic Morricone-inspired LP while spending time as DJ Harvey's sole label-mate. You might be following his endless list of production and remix work for the likes of Goat, The Horrors and Hospital Productions. Cherrystone explains his work: "...As long as it makes people move on the floor, I'm into it. I've been running a rescue home for the culturally starved and ignored - a sonic soup kitchen within a philanthropic playground. That's the vibe." On Critical Mass, Cherrystones tunes the listener in to fourteen groups, separated by locale but united by a restless urge to create on their own terms. From Rizzo's nihilistic Moogie-boogie to a pre-teen Chandra's isolated no-wave. Through Dojoji's downtown-via-Lagos inspired punk-funk and Fote's dark, industrial groove, Critical Mass presents a snapshot of an international underground enthralled with the possibility of the new. Cherrystones on the release: "This compilation was put together through records I was enjoying at that time - loose chips, fragmented discoveries, random punts and the true excitement from that hit of 'What the fuck is that?!' It is an exercise in the good and the rad - solid jams from all corners of the world. A veritable platter to switch on the uninitiated or those who hear and feel the truth - it is not an exercise in rarity to make people feel alienated. I know what I feel and I hear the messages and feel the vibrations in these very songs - as will you if you allow them to." In a world in search of an instant authentic buzz - this compilation is not a five second internet high. It is alchemy - made out of blood and sweat, and pure knowledge on how to make people move. Let Cherrystones shake your bones. Critical Mass also features: Rheingold, The Tee-Vees, Aksak Maboul, Transmitters, The Method Actors, Crazy House, Bamboo Zoo, The Lines, 39 Clocks, and The Flowerpot Men.

Double LP version. 2015 release. Cherrystones pulls together the sympathetic sounds of the psychedelic ghetto. London's best kept secret, Cherrystones has been on the underground scene for a while. People kinda speak of his grooved-out genius in hushed whispers. You might remember when he closed down the final night of ATP after a decade long residency? Or when the heat moved from London to NYC which saw our man deliver an epic Morricone-inspired LP while spending time as DJ Harvey's sole label-mate. You might be following his endless list of production and remix work for the likes of Goat, The Horrors and Hospital Productions. Cherrystone explains his work: "...As long as it makes people move on the floor, I'm into it. I've been running a rescue home for the culturally starved and ignored - a sonic soup kitchen within a philanthropic playground. That's the vibe." On Critical Mass, Cherrystones tunes the listener in to fourteen groups, separated by locale but united by a restless urge to create on their own terms. From Rizzo's nihilistic Moogie-boogie to a pre-teen Chandra's isolated no-wave. Through Dojoji's downtown-via-Lagos inspired punk-funk and Fote's dark, industrial groove, Critical Mass presents a snapshot of an international underground enthralled with the possibility of the new. Cherrystones on the release: "This compilation was put together through records I was enjoying at that time - loose chips, fragmented discoveries, random punts and the true excitement from that hit of 'What the fuck is that?!' It is an exercise in the good and the rad - solid jams from all corners of the world. A veritable platter to switch on the uninitiated or those who hear and feel the truth - it is not an exercise in rarity to make people feel alienated. I know what I feel and I hear the messages and feel the vibrations in these very songs - as will you if you allow them to." In a world in search of an instant authentic buzz - this compilation is not a five second internet high. It is alchemy - made out of blood and sweat, and pure knowledge on how to make people move. Let Cherrystones shake your bones. Critical Mass also features: Rheingold, The Tee-Vees, Aksak Maboul, Transmitters, The Method Actors, Crazy House, Bamboo Zoo, The Lines, 39 Clocks, and The Flowerpot Men.

Restocked; Limited edition vinyl + download -- numbered. Inspired by a number of conversations between director Yann Demange and music producer David Holmes, the majority of '71's score was created before the film was shot. Yann likes to shoot with music already written -- an idea that resonates with the collaborative work of Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone. With reference to Can's soundtrack work, in which only Irmin Schmidt would have seen the film, David would describe the emotion, tone and atmosphere of the scene with the other band members before recording and then editing to picture after. He says "It frees your imagination to try and capture a world that only you can see and feel but in total relation to the director's overall vision. Living in Belfast for most of my life was also a big inspiration." Musically influenced by John Carpenter's Assault from Precinct 13 and Escape from New York, John Paul Jones' "Four Minute Warning" and Tony Conrad's "The Pyre of Angus Was in Kathmandu," the music pulses with the tension and potential terror of war-torn Belfast streets in 1971.

Inspired by a number of conversations between director Yann Demange and music producer David Holmes, the majority of '71's score was created before the film was shot. Musically influenced by John Carpenter's Assault from Precinct 13 and Escape from New York, John Paul Jones' "Four Minute Warning" and Tony Conrad's "The Pyre of Angus Was in Kathmandu," the music pulses with the tension and potential terror of war-torn Belfast streets in 1971. "Holding it all together is David Holmes' terrific score, chiming guitars and drums hovering over a rubble-bed of sampled sounds and remodulated chords, plaintive melodies emerging from a bedrock of discord and disquiet... Demange uses Holmes' eerie score (to which he listened on set) to generate both growing tension and weirdly uncanny unease." --Mark Kermode; "A terrific soundtrack by David Holmes which ratchets up the tension and gives you this sense that things are eerie, things are uncanny, things are slightly out of wack." --Kermode and Mayo's Film Review